A Little Bit of Family, A Whole Lot of Food, with a Little Bit of Life Thrown In.

Friday, January 5, 2007

I tried...

A few weeks ago, Kevin at Seriously Good announced a Mac-N-Cheese off for today. All in the spirit of fun and good eating, of course. I made a mental note to participate, I mean, mac-n-cheese! What's not to love about macaroni and cheese. Sadly, in my meal preparation this week, I set all thoughts of macaroni and cheesy goodness aside. Then this afternoon I saw Alanna's post at A Veggie Venture and my interest was renewed. I had forgotten about macaroni and cheese for today, but I did have a package of cheese tortellini in the fridge. Somehow, that tortellini would have to do.

I pulled a package of Spinach and Asiago chicken sausage out of the freezer to thaw, and peered in the fridge to see what I had to make some cheesy magic with. I settled on a hunk of fontina and a tub of feta. This was going to be good. I made a basic bechamel sauce with 2 tablespoons each of butter and flour, 1 and 1/4 cup of milk, salt and pepper, and about 1/4 cup each of fontina and feta. After the sauce was made, I sliced the sausage and browned it until golden brown on all pieces. The bechamel was poured over the sausage, scraping up the browned bits from the bottom of course. The tortellini was quickly boiled up before adding to the sausage and bechamel. The result? Decadence. A handful of baby spinach would have made this dish really sing, but it was very good just the way it was. Maybe not quite traditional mac-n-cheese, but it was an excellent Friday night meal with a loaf of homemade Buttermilk-Oatmeal bread. I really liked the sauce with fontina and feta, and will be filing that thought away for another time. Sorry about the picture... not my finest work.